Table of Contents
The process of mainstreaming gender budgeting should eventually result in gender responsive budgets. The terms gender responsive budgets, gender-sensitive budgets, gender budgets and women’s budgets are often used inter-changeably.
- Refers to the process of conceiving, planning, approving, executing, monitoring, analyzing and auditing budgets in a gender-sensitive way
- Involves analysis of actual expenditure and revenue (usually of governments) on women and girls as compared to expenditures on men and boys
- Helps Governments to decide how policies need to be made, adjusted and reprioritized
- Is a tool for effective policy implementation where one can check if the allocations are in line with policy commitments and are having the desired impact.
IDRC defines Gender Budgeting as “Gender budget initiatives analyze how governments raise and spend public money, with the aim of securing gender equality in decision-making about public resource allocation; and gender equality in the distribution of the impact of government budgets, both in their benefits and in their burdens. The impact of government budgets on the most disadvantaged groups of women is a focus of special attention.”(IDRC, 2001)
Five Steps of Gender Budgeting
- An analysis of the situation for women and men and girls and boys (and the different sub- groups) in a given sector.
- An assessment of the extent to which the sector’s policy addresses the gender issues and gaps described in the first step. This step should include an assessment of the relevant legislation, policies, programs and schemes. It includes an analysis of both the written policy as well as the implicit policy reflected in government activities. It should examine the extent to which the above meet the socio-economic and other rights of women.
- An assessment of the adequacy of budget allocations to implement the gender sensitive policies and programs identified in step 2 above.
- Monitoring whether the money was spent as planned, what was delivered and to whom? This involves checking both financially and the physical deliverables (disaggregated by sex)
- An assessment of the impact of the policy / program / scheme and the extent to which the situation described in step 1 has been changed, in the direction of greater gender equality.
Gender Auditing is part of the Gender Budgeting process. Gender auditing is the process that is conducted after the budget has been adopted and implemented. It is the process of reviewing financial outlays – looking at trends over time, percentage shares etc; analyzing and assessing systems actually put in place, processes adopted, outcomes and impacts of budgetary outlays vis-à-vis what was planned – all this through a gender lens. The three main components of Gender Budgeting are Policy Appraisal, Gender Budgeting and Gender Auditing.
- Ministry of Women & Child Development
- Gender and Governance
- Gender Responsive Governance
- Gender Analysis
- Gender statistics
- Use of Gender Statistics
- Gender Training
- Gender Lens
- Reproductive Labour Tax